so the thing about the slime army in quackity’s most recent lore that keeps getting to me surprisingly isn’t actually the human rights violation part of it (although i have MANY thoughts about that as well, don’t get me wrong, c!quackity my little fucked up meow meow) but instead the fucked up tragedy of it? imagine a loss so brutal that you’ll do anything, anything to get even a fraction of that friendship back. imagine being in a place where teaching hundreds of slimes to be human seems like a good, solid idea of what to do next. and that’s a big part of what stood out to me, and what i wish had been elaborated on more– c!quackity didn’t say he wanted to teach the slimes to be good soldiers, no, he wanted to teach them to be human! this wasn’t really focused on at all in lore, because narratively the slimes existed to provide an obstacle for c!dream and c!purpled so they just ended up being, well, meat slime shields (good soldiers) but c!quackity explicitly said he wanted them to be human, and i think that could be so interesting if explored further. what could’ve happened if c!quackity had slowed down a bit with the human/slime rights violations? if he really had taught them to be human? if his fear for the fate of las nevadas hadn’t been quite so intense, if he didn’t think he needed obedient soldiers quite so badly?
honestly, he probably wouldn’t have fucking done it! lets be honest here, if he’d had even an ounce less fear he would’ve hopefully seen sense and not done. Well. ThatTM. c!quackity i adore you but what the fuck. what the absolute fuck.
anyway, that’s a moot point at the moment (… unless i want to explore it in fic. which you know what, maybe i will. maybe i’ll write a fic where c!quackity gets cold feet like halfway into his slime army montage and suddenly has to deal with the consequences of his human/slime rights violations.)
(… actually wait that could be a really interesting fic oh shit.)
but ANYWAY, moving on, in canon c!quackity’s fear was so intense that he did do it, and he did it in such a way that he got good, obedient soldiers, and not much else.
ngl, that’s part of the reason why i’m so attached to the c!dream lore that never was– c!quackity taking another L there and having c!dream just slip out of his fingers like that, while in/near his own city, provides a really fascinating backdrop for this character decision. c!purpled betrayed him. c!slime is dead. c!techno escaped. c!dream escaped twice. c!sam lied to him, and failed to contain c!dream twice. yeah, he needs people for his city because that casino opening was embarrassing as fuck, but that’s not the only reason now, is it? las nevadas is in danger. this is his last chance, his last hurrah– failure is unacceptable. he’s grieving, he wants his friend back. he’s desperate and scared, he needs protection, and people that agree with him, and if he blurs his memories of c!slime enough–
well. there was loyalty there. a willingness to die for him. c!quackity can work with that.
(in the end, c!quackity’s grief intermingled with his fear in the worst of ways. his attempt to just get something, anything of his friend back became something so much worse, so much darker. something that made even said friend look at him differently when he saw what he’d done. he said he wanted the slimes to be human, but stamped out every part of the process that had truly made c!slime human in the first place.)